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chuckroAs part of a friend's bachelor party festivities, we had dinner at Nobu last night. I was wary about the $160/head prix fixe price tag, but Xannoside and Bigscary assured me that if I could make it work in my budget, it was well worth my time. And they were right.
There were 15 of us, so the meal was done family style, with three big bowls of each item brought for the table. This worked particularly well because there were two choices at each course, so everyone got to have some of everything.
- Salad course: Seared tuna and mixed greens in a seasame-ginger dressing. I don't usually even like seared tuna, but it was good enough to narrowly beat out the other salad as my favorite of the two. The other was the lobster and mixed greens in spicy garlic dressing, which was as good as you'd expect from that description.
- Appetizer: Yellowtail with soy sauce and jalapeno, which was my least favoite of anything we ate there, but only because I'm not that crazy about strong jalapeno heat, not because this dish wasn't good. The other dish was fluke "new style" with scallions and a really good sesame sauce. We came to the conclusion that the sauce kinda overpowered the fish, and a stronger fish (bluefish maybe, said the various Long Islanders) would have been better, but that was a minor quibble because of how good the sauce was to begin with.
- Entree 1: Arctic char (very similar to salmon) with crispy-fried spinach. (Apparently you can skim fresh spinach through a deep fryer, and rather than wilting or absorbing oil, it just gets crispy. It was kinda awesome.) Tempura shrimp in spicy Japanese mayo, which had obviously been jumbo prawns that were cut into bite sized pieces, then fried in a very light batter so that most of each piece was shrimp. Possibly the best fried shrimp I've had. (Xannoside and I decided it was the chef's response to getting bad popcorn shrimp somewhere and deciding to show them how it's done.)
- Entree 2: The best dish of the night, and apparently the chef's signature dish, was a piece of blackened cod that had been marinated in sweet miso sauce. I've never been able to describe a piece of fish as "melting in my mouth" before. If you ever go to Nobu, and you like fish at all, GET THIS. There was also a beef tenderloin with homemade spicy ketchup and roast potatoes and tomatoes, which was very nice but seriously overshadowed.
- Sushi: They make damn fine sushi. The rice wasn't just standard sushi rice--there was wasabi and garlic in it, at least; and the fish was top quality. The standout here was the live scallop sushi, which I was wary about because scallops are often problematically chewy, but it was really good. There was also a complex soft-shell crab roll that almost put me in a blissful sushicoma.
- Dessert: A mug of layered cappocino custard, chocolate-coffee crunchy bits, vanilla ice cream, and whiskey foam. Each good individually, but amazing in combination.
Needless to say, we waddled out and didn't need any snacks during karaoke afterwards.
There were 15 of us, so the meal was done family style, with three big bowls of each item brought for the table. This worked particularly well because there were two choices at each course, so everyone got to have some of everything.
- Salad course: Seared tuna and mixed greens in a seasame-ginger dressing. I don't usually even like seared tuna, but it was good enough to narrowly beat out the other salad as my favorite of the two. The other was the lobster and mixed greens in spicy garlic dressing, which was as good as you'd expect from that description.
- Appetizer: Yellowtail with soy sauce and jalapeno, which was my least favoite of anything we ate there, but only because I'm not that crazy about strong jalapeno heat, not because this dish wasn't good. The other dish was fluke "new style" with scallions and a really good sesame sauce. We came to the conclusion that the sauce kinda overpowered the fish, and a stronger fish (bluefish maybe, said the various Long Islanders) would have been better, but that was a minor quibble because of how good the sauce was to begin with.
- Entree 1: Arctic char (very similar to salmon) with crispy-fried spinach. (Apparently you can skim fresh spinach through a deep fryer, and rather than wilting or absorbing oil, it just gets crispy. It was kinda awesome.) Tempura shrimp in spicy Japanese mayo, which had obviously been jumbo prawns that were cut into bite sized pieces, then fried in a very light batter so that most of each piece was shrimp. Possibly the best fried shrimp I've had. (Xannoside and I decided it was the chef's response to getting bad popcorn shrimp somewhere and deciding to show them how it's done.)
- Entree 2: The best dish of the night, and apparently the chef's signature dish, was a piece of blackened cod that had been marinated in sweet miso sauce. I've never been able to describe a piece of fish as "melting in my mouth" before. If you ever go to Nobu, and you like fish at all, GET THIS. There was also a beef tenderloin with homemade spicy ketchup and roast potatoes and tomatoes, which was very nice but seriously overshadowed.
- Sushi: They make damn fine sushi. The rice wasn't just standard sushi rice--there was wasabi and garlic in it, at least; and the fish was top quality. The standout here was the live scallop sushi, which I was wary about because scallops are often problematically chewy, but it was really good. There was also a complex soft-shell crab roll that almost put me in a blissful sushicoma.
- Dessert: A mug of layered cappocino custard, chocolate-coffee crunchy bits, vanilla ice cream, and whiskey foam. Each good individually, but amazing in combination.
Needless to say, we waddled out and didn't need any snacks during karaoke afterwards.
